What is the future of Zionism? The greatest challenge ahead for Zionism is to bring tens of millions of Median Jews on Aliyah from the Middle East and beyond and settle and absorb them in Israel. However, there is also the question of Western Jewry. Can it be saved from the clutches of assimilation and eventually brought to Israel? There are those who predict that Israel will double its GDP in 15 years based on the 5% annual GDP growth rate and the 10% annual GDP growth rate in the high tech industry in the last decade. Therefore it is assumed that Israel will become so attractive for Western Jews that many will move there for economic reasons. Median Jewry is not highly educated and this means that the highly educated Western Jewry clearly will be needed to fill new job positions in Israel.
For now the greatest threat against Western Jewry is intermarriage and therefore an Israeli-financed project for comprehensive scientific computerized psychometric matchmaking (including preferences for body odors, facial contours, height, detailed sexual preferences, personality compatibility etc.) should be launched throughout the Diaspora. It would all be completely free of charge and would offer many highly compatible candidates for a bashert (soulmate) through advanced AI technology.
There needs to be Aliyah studies at Israeli universities committed to systematically studying olim, their personal profiles (are they e.g. psychometrically distinguishable in any respect whatsoever?), achievements and motivations. This is crucial for increasing Aliyah and particularly so Western Aliyah. We simply need to know more in scientific terms about olim, Aliyah and Klitah (absorption) in order to do a far better job in bringing more Jews to Israel.
NBN (Nefesh B’Nefesh) has done a great job in increasing retention of Anglo olim chadashim (new immigrants) in Israel from 50% to 90% while only marginally increasing Aliyah. The successful work in Klitah by NBN was not based on scientific studies but was rather based on trial and error in accumulated experience. We need to bring science to Aliyah and Klitah.
We need to outsource Aliyah in order to create a competitive market for Aliyah companies that will better market life in Israel to Diaspora Jewry. Israel already offers free Hebrew high schools in Israel for Diaspora youth but most Diaspora families are unaware of this program due to lack of marketing. An Aliyah company should be responsible for both Aliyah and Klitah so as to ensure retention and would be paid according to retention.
Israel needs to abolish tuition for Israeli citizens in all Israeli colleges and universities. Furthermore, an English-language university named Zionist University needs to be established in Israel and tuition should be abolished for all who qualify under the Law of Return. Zionist University should be focused on high tech studies and parallel Hebrew studies should be compulsory so that when the foreign student graduates he/she/they will be completely proficient in Hebrew and ready for settling in Israel. Its staff should be recruited from the English-speaking world. After they graduate should there be programs to offer them jobs in Israel so as to ensure that they actually make Aliyah. Tuition is a heavy economic burden for American families and so studying in English at a world-class university without having to pay tuition should be highly attractive for many American Jewish students.
There is a need for comparative bureaucracy studies that will study and compare red tape in different nations so as to find the optimal solutions with minimal annoyance for the citizens. This is a critical issue because many Western olim arrive in Israel and find a third world bureaucracy and this is quite unacceptable. That negative experience certainly does not send a good message to their Jewish kin and Jewish friends in the Diaspora. The solution is science.
American universities have increasingly become occupied by virulent Anti-Zionists who have aligned themselves with intersectionalists and critical theorists. Zionists have failed to come up with a good answer. What is needed is nothing less than Jewish critical theory that will deconstruct the discursive structures of Anti-Zionism, embed Jews in intersectionality as an indigenous discursively oppressed people within the Arabophonie and Islamdom, reappropriate the originally Jewish field of critical theory, bring rabbinic modes of thinking and reading to critical theory and thus popularize the Talmud to non-Orthodox Jews and integrate Zionism with indigenous studies.
The model for the revival of Hebrew has successfully been used to revive a formerly dying Western Aramaic dialect in the Galilee village of Jish (Gush Halav) among Maronite Israeli Aramaeans there. This successful model should be exported to indigenous peoples around the world and should be funded by the State of Israel. This should be part of establishing Israel and Zionism as a role model for Fourth World peoples around the world, including especially in indigenous studies at universities.
Aliyah Organization 